Chipzilla has announced that its entry-level Ivy Bridge Core i3 processors will be available after June 24. This is a lot earlier than the third-quarter which most people expected.

Intel’s Taiwan branch announced these chips will start shipping as early as the third week of this month. The dual-core Core i3 chips were expected to launch just in time for the holidays. Intel's Core i3 chips, we should soon see even more affordable laptops and desktops.

Higher-end versions of Intel’s third-generation processor were released earlier this year - the top-of-the-line Core i7 and mainstream Core i5 processors. These are already showing up in new and updated laptops and desktop PCs.

It is unclear whether Intel moved up the timing on the Core i3 processors to help ramp up Ivy Bridge computer sales. It is also strange because most of us thought this move was waiting for Windows 8 to be released.

Apple has just announced iOS 6 and there are a few novelties for owners of iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and the next generation iPhone, which is expected this autumn.

The most notable are the maps with turn by turn navigation, with a claim that this has been designed by Apple. Apple is using Tomtom maps, but it offers what looks to be a nice turn by turn navigation with spoken directions and flyover – a chance to see selected cities and landmarks from air and can calculate an alternative route with traffic app. It looks like it has all you need for decent competitor to Google’s navigation.

Siri in iOS6 will speak “sports”. This looks quite interesting as it can tell you American football scores (USA version of it at least), some basic details about players or simply provide info on whether Kobe is taller than LeBron. It will provide statistics such as baseball batting average, albeit in USA-centric sports.

We are not sure if Apple now talks European sports, especially football (we will not call it soccer, forget it. sub.ed.). Apple has until September 2012 to tune into some European sports. Football got mentioned but at this point, Siri speaks English Premier League only.

Siri will be able to tell you about restaurants nearby and it will sort them by rating, type, etc. Furthermore, Apple has partnered with Yelp to provide more info on that sort of stuff. Apple has also integrated support for OpenTable and can now help you book a table directly from iOS 6 and Siri.

It will you about movies playing in your local theater, find movies starring with your favorite actor and even let you see trailers on your Siri devices. Siri will come to the latest iPad, something that many will appreciate. Siri will also launch apps, something that many have anticipated.

Eyesfree is also a new feature where you car will let you use your hands-free button to activate Siri. Apple won’t turn the screen on, it will just let the phone talk to you. In the next twelve months BMW, GM, Mercedes, land rover, Jaguar, Audi, Toyota, Crysler and Honda are expected to include this feature with some of their cars.

Siri will speak English and French for Canada, Spanish Mexico, Italian, Switzerland, Korean, Mandarin for Taiwan, Cantonese Hong Kong and Mandarin and Cantonese for mainland China. .

Apple will have improved Facebook integration and Facetime will work over 3G. Over two thirds of mobile webpage requests are coming from Safari, and now you’ll be able to share tabs from other devices. Precaching webpages in order to read them later will also be possible.

Photo streams will be shared between Apple devices including the likes of iPad, Mac, Apple TV. Naturally, you’ll see them on all of these devices.

It will be possible to store messages in VIP or flagged messages folder and open password protected word documents. Inserting pictures or videos in mail compose window will be made easy and you can refresh the mail list.

Passbook (below) will keep all of your passes in one place. This should unify your store cards, boarding passes and movie tickets.

Overall it looks like a decent update that will hit your iPhone 4, 4S and the new iPad in fall of 2012, let’s say September-ish, just in time for the new iPhone 5.

Spring time is going to be big for Xbox Live Arcade releases. Microsoft announced its Arcade Next promotion, which will start on April 18th and run through May 9th. The Arcade Next promotion will see a new title published (or from Microsoft Studios get released) each Wednesday during the promotion.

While the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft might be the big star of the Arcade Next promotion, we can’t help but be pretty excited about Trials Evolution, as well. While some might complain about the 1,600 Microsoft Points for Minecraft on the Xbox 360, it does appear to offer a lot of unique features just for the console version, which could prove to be very fun.

The other big news about all four of these releases during the Arcade Next promotion is that they will all have a total of 400 achievement points as part of Microsoft’s new increase in allowable points per Xbox Live Arcade Title. No word yet if, as with other XBLA promotions, when you buy all of them you get some points back.

We have an unreliable source in Microsoft claiming that Office 365 will be released in June. CEO Steve Ballmer used to be quite a good deep throat in Microsoft, but lately his predictions of product launches have been off the mark and often disputed by officials that actually run things.

Speaking in Delhi Ballmer said that Microsoft was pushing hard in the productivity space. Microsoft would launch its Office 365 cloud service, which gives Lync and Exchange and SharePoint and Office and as a subscribable service that comes from the cloud. That launches in the month of June.

The cloud service will replace the current Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), and include access to Exchange, SharePoint, the Lync unified communications suite, and both desktop and Web-based versions of Office tools such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The Office 365 beta has attracted more than 100,000 customers, and was recently expanded to become a public beta available to anyone.

To be fair to Steve, June is a good bet for a launch. In April, Microsoft would only say that Office 365 will launch later this year. It is in competition Microsoft is facing from Google Apps so it will need to get something out quickly.

Following the introduction of Ivy Bridge, Intel plans to launch another 22nm processor, but this time it will use a new architecture.

You may recall that Intel uses its tick tock model - every year there's either tick or tock, where tick is a new architecture and tock is a new process. It went 45 to 32nm in last two years and now it’s getting ready to move to 22nm.

Yesterday, at a pre-Computex press event, Intel's EVP mentioned that with introduction of Haswell in 2013. The thermals will get better for their Ultrabook strategy. Intel definitely puts a lot of attention to their ultraportable, thin and light notebooks, as this is the only way for them to stay competitive against ARM and a big fear of tablet revolution.

Haswell is promised to have a thermal design reduced by half than today’s design point, and this definitely looks promising, especially as Haswell is only two years always. By the time Haswell comes, we expect to see Windows 8 for ARM and that tablets become a real thing that can sell with more than 250,000 units in a few months, of course for players that don’t have an Apple in their logo.

Shadow Complex from developer Chair Entertainment became a big hit when it was released. The retro-like action-platformer drew from a variety of retro titles to create something very unique and fun to play. With two years having passed since its release, the question of a sequel is still something fans want to know about.

Apparently, developer Chair Entertainment has been thinking about the possibility of a sequel and has recently gone on the record to say that as far as a sequel is concerned it is, “…a question of when.” In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Donald Mustard, the creative director at Chair, does not come right out and admit that a sequel is in development, but clearly indicates they are working on some cool stuff (which may or may not involve Shadow Complex).

According to our sources, the safe bet is that Chair is mapping out a sequel, but they are apparently still thinking about what they want to do and how they want to do it. While the whispers that we hear suggest that we should not expect an announcement anytime soon, an announcement is expected at some point. One thing we do know is not to expect a version of Shadow Complex to arrive for the iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone, as the company isn’t a fan of trying to take a controller-based game such as Shadow Complex and adapting it for a touchscreen.

A number of sources tell us that Microsoft will be showing off a new version of Windows that is targeted for consumer electronics and named set-top boxes. The stripped down version of Windows is said to be taking direct aim at both Apple TV and Google TV.

While it is unlikely that Microsoft will be selling these boxes themselves, it is expected that the embedded and customized version of Windows will offer users an interface that is similar to what we have seen Microsoft working with in the Windows Phone 7 and Zune devices. Microsoft is said to be able to blend the TV and Internet experience together with their offering.

While these boxes are expected to arrive from a number of sources later this year, it will not be the first time that Microsoft has attempted to dip its toe into the TV waters. Microsoft offered a DVR device using its own OS under the UltimateTV branding, but it was never really that successful. It is expected that these new offerings will retail for about $200 when they arrive. They are going to have to pack a lot of punch and offer a significant value proposition in order to be successful.

Atari has officially now confirmed that they are going to be reinventing the classic Star Raiders franchise with a new Star Raiders game to be released next year. The game is being developed for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC platforms, and currently it is unknown if it will be a digital download offering or retail box release; but the preference is for a digital download release.

Star Raiders was originally developed for the Atari 400/800 computer systems by Doug Neubauer way back in 1979, and a 2600 dubbed down release followed later on. (An Atari 5200 release based on the 400/800 release was also released.) Star Raiders on the 400/800 computers was very advanced and was designed to take advantage of the Atari 400/800 graphics to show off what the system could do in relation to the competitors, who didn’t have anything nearly as good at the time. More than one Atari 400/800 was sold just by seeing Star Raiders.

The new Star Raiders will be developed by Incinerator Games and the studio claims that it will include all of the space dog fighting, tactical battles, and energy management from the original. This promises to be different and will be based on what made Star Raiders great, rather than following the path of other sequels that never quite felt like Star Raiders.

Star Raiders joins Haunted House as the first two titles that are being overhauled from the old Atari days. A rumored Centipede offering is also said to be in development, but Atari has yet to confirm that this is the case. Atari is hopeful that these new reboots of old franchise titles will be successful so that other title releases can be planned. No additional release information was offered for the new Star Raiders title other than it will arrive early next year.

Verizon will officially start filling in some of the blanks in the company’s LTE 4G plans later today in a presentation planned for the CTIA conference in San Francisco. The company has been talking about its move to LTE in broad strokes up to now, but sources tell us that the company will get more specific on its build out plans and when we can expect the devices to take advantage of it.

According to the whispers that we have heard, the company has been conducting a number of trials and has been testing in a variety of locations across the U.S. to get prepared to launch LTE. Some of the rumblings we have heard are quite encouraging, and it could be that Verizon is much further along than other carriers on preparing for their LTE deployment.

The biggest question, of course, is when does Verizon expect to have it deployed and when can we start expecting some of the first LTE devices to take advantage of it? Our sources tell us that Verizon will have a lot to say and might be in for even a surprise or two, you just never know.